City Of Billings Public Works Director Says Residential Streets Have Been 90-95% Plowed… Really?

In an email to the Billings City Council Public Works Director Dave Mumford said 90-95% of Billings residential streets have "seen" the plow. Maybe he meant that a plow showed up somewhere on a fixed point along each street somewhere on its route because he couldn't have possible meant for instance that Clark Avenue just west of downtown had been plowed the entire length of that road. In fact most of the residential streets in the area just west of downtown were still covered with snow.

Then Mumford said “the expectation that we would get down to the pavement, but realistically, we couldn’t. The snow was too hard to get plows through. People said, ‘You never plowed my street.’ We did, but we couldn’t get through to the pavement.” I'm not talking about streets that had most of their snowfall plowed with maybe an inch or two still on top of the surface of the pavement... I'm talking about streets that still have so much snow that the cars and trucks driving on them create deep tracks with large ridges in between. This isn't a characteristic of a street that has been mostly plowed.

As I work here at the radio station on-air and in many other capacities I don't have time to snap a dozen pictures and go to every corner of town but in my limited travels Mumford's words ring hollow. I have no doubt they're trying their level best with limited resources but the idea that 90-95% of our residential streets have been plowed doesn't pass the smell test. Below are just a couple of photos colleagues of mine have take in their neighborhoods to prove my point. If challenged I could easily run out and take a dozen pics to prove it further.